


Hero of Orlais

by ehefic



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 11:57:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3649485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ehefic/pseuds/ehefic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I hear she slayed five dragons and saved Divine Beatrix.<br/>When Josephine first meets the Hero of Orlais, all she can think about is whether the stories are true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hero of Orlais

**Author's Note:**

  * For [madamebadger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madamebadger/gifts).



> Kind of a warm-up for getting back into writing. Might rework this prompt at a later date.

It’s her first night in Haven, and Josephine can still smell the musk from the carriage lingering in her hair, although she changed her dress when she arrived. The Chantry has its own musty scent, heavy in the air, that stirs as Leliana walks to the center of her room.

  
Josephine slips inside after her and eases the door closed, so carefully the latch makes no noise as it falls into place. Leliana makes no move to respond, although she’s certainly noticed that Josephine has trailed her inside. She touches the papers on her desk; Josephine imagines a thoughtful expression hidden by the lavender cowl.

“That’s the Hero of Orlais?” asks Josephine after a moment.

Leliana turns and smiles her small, knowing smile. “You were expecting something else? You must admit Cassandra is exactly as people describe her.”

The wood is solid and cool as Josephine leans back against the door. She twists her fingers together behind her back. “Did she really slay five dragons to save Divine Beatrix?”

Leliana regards her with interest, her expression a cipher and her eyes sharp and glittery in the candlelight. “It was a long time ago,” she says, too casually. “Cassandra would tell you so herself.”

“I was only curious.” Josephine flashes one of her more disarming smiles, although she knows Leliana is not so easily disarmed. “The tale I know sounds like it belongs in one of Master Tethras’s books.”

Leliana chuckles, but Josephine can spot suspicion in her narrowed eyes.

Eventually, when Josephine offers no elaboration, Leliana shrugs. “It is not for me to say how it happened. That is how the tale is told, but I certainly was not there to bear witness. In truth, I suspect the truth has been lost, after so many years and so many retellings.”

“Truly? Such a dramatic event, and with so many witnesses?”

“Witnesses lie, to themselves and to others, and stories do grow grander with each retelling.” Josephine’s disappointment must be apparent, for Leliana gently adds, “You might ask the woman herself, Josie.”

Josephine laughs and stands straighter, away from the door. “I hardly think that a suitable topic for our second conversation. I have not had the pleasure of spending seven years in her company.”

“I’m not sure pleasure is the word I would choose,” Leliana says, but she smiles. “At any rate, you may be right. Cassandra is usually uncomfortable to begin with, and discussing herself seems to make her even more uncomfortable.”

Josephine nods, but her eyes slip away from Leliana’s face, her mind recalling Cassandra’s burnished black armor, her furrowed brow and strong jaw. In the candlelight, her face had been slashed with shadows. “Are you all right, Josie?” she hears.

“Of course.” She fixes a smile on her face and her gaze on Leliana. “It’s so exciting, this Inquisition of yours. You’ve pulled together quite a team.”

Leliana’s smile becomes a smirk. “More like a menagerie.” But, as soon as it came, her smirk disappears like a crow fleeing a storm. She touches the edge of her hood: a nervous gesture Josephine recognizes. “I do hope we’re doing the right thing,” Leliana murmurs, soft and earnest.

“I am sure it will work out for the best.”

Leliana takes a calming breath, the sort that might precede a chant. “I do hope it is what Justinia would have wanted. There is so much she did not tell us, before… But this is all we can do.”

  
***

“Cullen?” says Josephine, just before he leaves the room but just after Leliana and Cassandra do. He turns, polite and patient, and rests his hands on his sword pommel. “Might I ask you something?”

“Of course,” he says. Polite and patient.

Josephine shifts her board to her other hand and bites her lip, making a show of feeling hesitant. “Do you… well, this might seem silly.”

As expected, a smile tickles his face at the edges. He relaxes his arms and his feathered collar shivers. “Don’t worry about it. Go ahead.”

“I was only wondering…” Josephine flicks her eyes at the door, hanging half-shut. “Did Cassandra really slay five dragons to save Divine Beatrix?”

Cullen blinks in surprise, then blurts out a bark of a laugh. “Haven’t the foggiest idea, actually.” He glances at the door and chuckles. “I wouldn’t put it past her, though.”  
Josephine laughs her airy laugh. “I see. I was only wondering. No one seems to know.”

“That’s true. Plays her cards close to the chest, that one,” Cullen says with a shrug. He holds the door open for Josephine and laughs as they leave the war room: “Actually, I’m surprised she lets her cards get that close.”

***

Josephine can justify leaving the Chantry to enjoy the fresh air and collect gossip at the tavern, and she designs her stroll to bring her right past the firepit where Varric Tethras has been sulking for the better part of the week.

“Master Tethras,” Josephine greets politely, slowing her pace to invite conversation.

“Lady Ambassador,” he says, his tone more cheerful than his demeanor. “How can I be of service?”

Josephine pushes back the hood of her cloak to be friendly. Scarce snowflakes drift in the night breeze. “How have you been keeping? I hope our hospitality in Haven is an improvement.”

“Over unwilling incarceration in Kirkwall?” He laughs his sour, carefree laugh, like he can’t believe what’s happening to him, but it amuses him all the same. “I’d say it has its perks, even if it’s always freezing. At least our dear Seeker has found something to occupy her time besides interrogating me.”

“Ah.” Josephine crosses her arms beneath her cloak. “Yes, I had heard you had a rather tense introduction.”

“You can say that again.”

Josephine pauses, considering her options. Her thoughts coalesce with her breath: a mist in the air, melting into the fire’s smoke. “So you had not met her, before Kirkwall?”

Varric frowns. “No. Should I have?”

“I only thought… I was certain someone had written the tale of the Hero of Orlais, and I thought it might have been you,” Josephine says, huffing as if annoyed to have forgotten.

Another laugh: purer, more mirthful. His necklace gleams in the light. “Oh, that old yarn. No, that was… Farleigh Saunier, I believe? Quite a piece of sensationalist literature, that was, even by my standards.” He chuckles, rubbing his chin. “And anyway, I doubt he ever laid eyes on her. He quite literally wouldn’t have lived to tell the tale.”

“I take it you’re doubtful of its accuracy?” Josephine smiles. She makes a mental note to locate a copy of Saunier’s retelling.

“Psh, how could you not be?” Varric waves vaguely as if swatting a fly. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t relish being on the pointy end of the Lady Seeker’s sword, and she’s plenty formidable by all accounts, but flying one dragon into another dragon? That’s downright fantasy.”

“Of course.” Josephine tugs her hood back over her head and smiles politely. “Always a pleasure, Master Tethras.”

***

While it’s clear Saunier has a flair for the dramatic, and that his account is littered only very lightly with actual facts, Josephine finds herself deeply enamored of his teenage firebrand Cassandra. The writing is at times quite atrocious, but Josephine can’t help but find even this fictional Cassandra quite charming. As she approaches the end, after an unusually effective expository chapter featuring Cassandra at her most righteous, she decides to read the final few chapters outside with aid of the icy winter air to cool down a bit.

On a bench outside the Chantry, she burrows her blush in a warm knit scarf and paints Cassandra’s rich accent on Saunier’s words, lending them that warmth and eager earnestness that seems to sink into Josephine’s skin like the beach sun in Antiva. She shivers despite herself as Saunier’s Cassandra plunges her sword deep in the heart of evil, as she is dragged over the edge of the high wall. Her breath stalls as Cassandra climbs, battered but burdened with divine purpose, over the corpse of the pride demon, as she wrenches her sword from the charred carrion and raises it above her head, glorious as Andraste herself, shouting—

“I hear you’ve been asking about me.”

Josephine actually squeaks—squeaks, after all her years trained as an unflappable diplomat—and drops her book into the snow. She looks up at Cassandra Pentaghast, shadowed ominously, her head haloed by the sun.

“I… Pardon me?” Josephine hurriedly retrieves the book from the snow, shoving it closed and upside-down onto the bench beside her.

Cassandra sighs and her gaze flits from Josephine to the courtyard and back like a restless hummingbird. Her fingers twitch where they grip her forearms, crossed over her chest. “Varric. I hear you have been asking Varric about me.”

“Oh.” Josephine adjusts her cloak, draping it over the back cover of the novel, and squints up at Cassandra with regained composure. “It only came up in conversation. Do sit down, Lady Seeker,” she adds, gesturing to her other side. “I assure you, you are adequately intimidating without literally standing over me.”

Josephine offers a friendly smile to assure Cassandra she is teasing, but Cassandra seems not to notice as she sits down. She stares out at the courtyard rather than at Josephine, looking for all the world like a child about to be scolded.

“If you need to know something about me, you need only ask,” Cassandra says in her artless way, “although I cannot imagine there is much you do not already know.”

Her discomfort is so palpable, Josephine chooses a new question, the way she might choose a fruit from a basket at market. “How did you come to wear your hair this way?”

Cassandra turns sharply, wearing a different frown than before. Her nearness quickens Josephine’s pulse. “What? That cannot be what you asked Varric.” Her eyes search Josephine’s face as if searching a coat of armor for weaknesses.

Josephine smiles calmly under Cassandra’s scrutiny and offers a mild shrug. “As I said, I did not seek out Varric to investigate you, Lady Seeker. And there is a question for every occasion.”

“What does that mean?” Cassandra’s eyes narrow, wet and bright in their kohl shadows. A snowflake sticks to one of her dark eyelashes.

“Not every conversation need be an interrogation,” Josephine says as lightly as she can. She realizes as she says it that Cassandra perhaps disagrees.

Cassandra shifts her gaze back to the courtyard, her jaw shifting, her thoughts written dark across her face. Josephine waits as patiently as she can, but seeing Cassandra deep in thought makes her ever more curious to know what she’s thinking.

She’s about to twist her fingers together in her lap—a bad habit, her mother would tell her—when Cassandra says, “I was only… What are you reading?”

Josephine freezes; a glance confirms her fidgeting has uncovered the book. “Oh, I…” Josephine chuckles, caught, and lifts the cover so Cassandra can see it. Cassandra’s mouth opens, just slightly, and her pink cheeks grow pinker. “Well, Varric mentioned it, and I found a copy here in the Chantry, so…”

“I am sorry I asked,” Cassandra says drily. One of her feet shifts under the bench, perhaps preparing for flight.

“It’s not really so bad,” Josephine says. “You’re portrayed quite… heroically.”

Cassandra snorts. “Indeed. And you said Varric showed this to you?” Her eyes skim the edge of the courtyard, near Varric’s customary location.

“He didn’t exactly recommend it, but I thought it might be interesting to read, now that I’ve met the legend herself.” Josephine can hardly believe her own boldness: her words as fragile as the snowflakes settling in their clothes.

Cassandra only laughs again. “I am sure you will be quite disappointed. I am far less legendary and my life less lurid than any such retelling.”

Josephine smiles. “I think you may be a bit biased, Lady Seeker. I’ll have to decide for myself.”

Cassandra meets her eyes, startled and curious, her face relaxed and open. For a moment, Josephine imagines they are just slightly closer together, sharing space and breath, and Cassandra is—

“I suppose I cannot stop you,” Cassandra says. She looks at the courtyard, at her hands in her lap, at the trees. “But for now, I must return to my training.”

She leaves before Josephine can answer, and Josephine watches until she disappears from sight. Then, slow as a lily floating on a pond or a sleeper waking from a dream, Josephine draws the book back into her lap and opens it.


End file.
